About the book: 2013 / For the first time in Russian - a novel by Kate Atkinson, which has become a modern classic, whose debut book received the prestigious Whitbread Prize, beating Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Farewell Sigh, and whose series of novels about private detective Jackson Brody, which has become a favorite among Russian readers, was dubbed by Stephen King “the main detective project of the decade.” So, meet Isobel. She turns sixteen on April 1st. With his brother Charles, they live in the Arden mansion, built on the site of the estate of the old aristocratic family of Fairfax, and are waiting for their mother to return. “Our lives are shaped by Eliza’s absence,” Isobel says. “She left... and for some reason she forgot to take us with her.” Maybe she was absent-minded, or she wanted to return, but got lost. You never know what happens - let’s say, after her disappearance, our father himself disappeared, and seven years later he returned and blamed it all on memory loss.” The first lady Fairfax, they say, was kidnapped by the elves, and now an oak tree grows in that place - on the bark of which, according to legend, Shakespeare left his initials - and a curse hangs over the Fairfax family. Isobel is well oriented in the past, she is sure that she knows the future, but today is a mystery to her…